Social Psychology Chapters 4-7

Start Studying!

Terms

undefined, object

copy deck

Attitude: a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, exhibited in oneÂ’s beliefs, feelings, or intended behavior
Bogus pipeline: a procedure that fools people into disclosing their attitudes. Participants are first convinced that a machine can use their psychological responses to measure their private attitudes. Then they are asked to predict the machineÂ’s reading, thus revealing their attitudes.
Role: a set of norms that define how people in a given social position ought to behave
Foot in the door phenomenon: the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
Low ball technique: a tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it.
Cognitive dissonance: tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions
Insufficient justification effect: reduction of dissonance by internally justifying oneÂ’s behavior when external justification is inadequate
Self perception theory: the theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us, by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs
Overjustification effect: the result of bribing people to do what they already like doing, they may then see their actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing
Natural selection: the evolutionary process by which nature selects traits that best enable organisms to survive and reproduce in particular environmental niches
Evolutionary psychology: the study of the evolution of behavior using principles of natural selection
Culture: the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
Norms: rules for accepted and expected behavior, these prescribe proper behavior and what most others do
Personal space: the buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies, its size depends on our familiarity with whoever is near us
Gender: the characteristics whether biological or socially influenced by which people define male and female
Empathy: the vicarious experience of anotherÂ’s feelings, putting oneself in anotherÂ’s shoes
Aggression: physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone
Gender role: a set of behavior expectations for males and females
Interaction: the effect of one factor such as biology depends on another factor such as environmental
Conformity: a change in behavior or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure
Compliance: conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with social pressure while privately disagreeing
Obedience: acting in accord with a direct order
Acceptance: conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure
autokinetic phenomenon: self motion, the apparent movement of a stationary point of light in the dark
confederate: an accomplice of the experimenter
cohesiveness: a "we" feeling, the extent to which members of a group are bound together such as by attraction for one another
normative influence: conformity based on a personÂ’s desire to fulfill othersÂ’ expectations, often to gain acceptance
informational influence: conformity occurring when people accept evidence about reality provided by other people
reactance: a motive to protect or restore oneÂ’s sense of freedom, arises when someone threatens our freedom of action
persuasion: the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors
central route to persuasion: occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts
peripheral route to persuasion: occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speakerÂ’s attractiveness
credibility: a person with this is perceived as both expert and trustworthy
sleeper effect: a delayed impact of a message occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective, as we remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it
attractiveness: having qualities that appeal to an audience, an appealing is most persuasive on matters of subjective preference
primacy effect: other things being equal, information presented first usually has the most influence
recency effect: information presented last sometimes has the most influence
channel of communication: the way the message is delivered
two step flow of communication: the process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others
cult (new religious movement): a group typically characterized by distinctive ritual and beliefs related to its devotion to a god or a person, isolation from the surrounding evil culture and a charismatic leader
attitude inoculation: exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come they will have refutations available
Cognitive consistency theories: They are called this because:
1. They are about the thinking process, deals with perceptions of the world, involves reality as we perceive it not what it really is
2. They all share a general agreement that people like to have their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors consistent to each other.
Homeostasis: relates to thirst, hunger, desire for sex, when there is an imbalance in this the state comes up as a state of discomfort and the organism is motivated to do something about it in order to satisfy the hunger, in other words the organism is motivated to stay consistent with attitude
Cognitive dissonance theory & Leon Festinger: What is the theory and who is the discoverer of the idea that units of knowledge are called cognitive elements and these elements are basically conceptual bits about knowledge
State of irrelevance: Cognitive elements could be in a state of ??? (so the cognitive states are unrelated such as how a person feels that day and sunshine after darkness)
State of relevance and consonance: cognitive elements can also be in a state of ??? [like person training to get ready for a race, holding two cognitions relative to each other, they are also ??? (one follows the other)]
Dissonance: when one element does not follow the other, having cognitions in a state of this is like being in a motivation of hunger. The theory predicts that the arousal of this is a motivative state of discomfort and youÂ’re motivated to do something to reduce it.
Changing your attitude or beliefs or changing your behavior: You can respond to dissonance by ???
1. Importance of dissonance elements=the more different your actions from your attitude is the more dissonance this can create 2. Personal choice=the lack of personal choice minimizes dissonance: What effects the Magnitude of dissonance?
Validity: This is very important in creating a good theory. The theory has to make specific predictions and support or refute the theory. For example, cognitive dissonance theory makes nonobvious predictions. There are certain experiments that do not seem to go along with common sense. When this occurs it helps to prove the theory more.
Force compliance step dissonance theories (Coerced compliance) Note that people must feel they have some sort of private choice (or they won't feel any dissonance): people tricked into taking a public stand which they privately disagree
Study by Arthur Cohen. Note that the people paid the least changed their mind the most. Cognitive dissonance theory explains this by saying when you take a public stand against what you privately believe there is a possibility you will experience cogniti: This experimenter wanted students to write an essay about confrontation. They are actually complying with the request and are told that their essays will be made public. Personally they do not believe what they are writing, but they comply because of the money. The independent variable is the amount of money paid to them. The dependent variable is how the students actually feel after writing the essay.
Punishment and rewards: The smaller amount of ??? and ??? sufficient enough to stop an action, the more the person internalizes the event and decides not to do the action.
1. Importance=to what extent made one choice over another, more important more dissonance 2. Relative attractiveness of the unchosen alternative=to what extent was the other option attractive, more attractive other choice the more dissonance 3.: You must look at these particular considerations in decision making. The amount of dissonance that occurs when you make your choice is based on these. These choices are made during decision making situations.
Altruism: act of unselfish conserve for the welfare of others, act of good deeds, followers of the Golden Rule, unselfish interests, love of humanity and friendliness
Personal aspects & Environment: What makes a person altruistic?
1. Prosocial models of behavior from relationships of other people 2. Levels of empathy-identification with and understanding the feelings of another person 3. Must be learned and reinforced: Factors that causes altruistic behavior
they will show more altruism in the future: There is a correlation between showing empathy at a young age
Psychological Theories of altruism=Why would people show altruism?=Social exchange theory: human behavior/interactions maximizes rewards by minimizing costs with others, interactions guided by human economics, people exchange goods and services, reciprocal exchange relationship between recipient and giver (note that this does not necessarily involve money)
Sociological Theories of altruism=Why would people show altruism?=Social norms: tells us how we ought to behave in a given social situation
Sociological Theories of altruism=Why would people show altruism?=Social responsibility: society instructs us to help those who canÂ’t help themselves or others
Sociological Theories of altruism=Why would people show altruism?=Social learning theory: behavior can be learned and internalized from a model
Sociological Theories of altruism=Why would people show altruism?: Battle between egoism and altruism
Biological Theories of altruism=Why would people show altruism?=Evolutionary theory: people would protect people close to them to preserve their similar genes
Bystander effect: the finding that a person is less likely to provide help when there are others present, caused by misinterpretation
Level of emergency: tends to increase altruistic response
Altruism and gender effects presentation experiment: Hypothesis=gender is a factor in determining altruistic behavior, Independent variable=gender of confederate, Dependent variable=altruistic behavior, Predictions=men will be more likely to help women than other men, women will be more likely to help other women than men, women are more helpful then men.
MilgramÂ’s experiment: You have people X, Y, and Z. X tells Y to hurt Z (Y and Z are under X). His experiment showed what would happen.
Bruno Batta: Participant in a Milgram experiment, he force the learnerÂ’s hand onto the shock plate and followed the experimenter in a robotic fashion and with total indifference to the learner. It just seemed he wanted to do his job. We grow up learning to follow the person of higher authority. We have a lot of structure in learning how to obey authority.
Deception perspective: studies in which participants are deliberately given false information from the researcher, most experiments do not involve this
Darley and Latane: they conducted the smoke experiment to see how long it takes somebody to report the smoke, this was also a deception experiment
Cover stories: creates a story that allows the participants to make sense of whatÂ’s going on
Schachter and Singer: They were masters of cover stories, made a labeling of emotion, you look into the environment to see what emotion is appropriate due to a physiological arousal, cover story was that a drug will help you with vision (some where given epinephrine and some were given a placebo saline solution), this caused a flight of fight response and then the participant went into a room with a confederate doing crazy things and tried to get the other subject to join, they found the epinephrine group labeled the feeling as euphoria than people that only had saline solution, if confederate was mad the participant with epinephrine felt more anger
Daffil: said 1st borns sought to relive anxiety through others while later born could handle anxiety internally, cover story was people will give electric shocks and a guy with heavy German accent collected data
Applied psychology: discipline that comes from social psychology and it takes stuff from social psychology and applies it to things
George Gerbner (cultivation hypothesis): name of theory and who discovered it that says TV creates a window on the world that is not true, people that watch a lot of TV get a very distorted picture of reality which they accept
Bandora and the children imitating adults hitting BoBo dolls: study that showed People seems to imitate others in their behaviors.
Merchants R Cool: movie about the influence of teens in marketing and showed the more you use a trend and try to make money off it, you force Â“coolÂ” to move on to the next thing, 5 enormous companies sell the most (Disney, Viacom (MTV), AOL Time Warner) are always on the lookout of raw material and commercialize, package, and sell it. The video showed that the purpose of TV was to keep your attention long enough to try to sell you something.
Cool hunting: trying to look for a certain personality, influenced by those who have the trust and influence of their friends
Muck: annoying, popular, marketing person on TV
Midriff: Women, shown with power through sexuality and prematurity
Men: tough, aggressive, sex orientated
Festinger: said if you want to bring about attitude change you need to have the smallest amount of reward and punishment to bring about behavior and attitude.
Door in the face: you make an outrageously large request that you are sure people wonÂ’t comply, then you ask them to do the target request
Donna Brooks concluded that American culture taught people to do what they were told to do so long that the command comes from a legitimate authority.: A study done by ??? from Hendrix decided to do an experiment about attitude change. She wanted to see how a person would comply with the targeted request when given an outrageously negative request. The control was to see how people would comply with the targeted request without the larger request. She had a laboratory rat and had it in a cage with a Â“shock apparatus.Â” Her hypothesis was that more people would comply after given a larger initial request and then the target request. To her surprise, all the participants agreed to do the outrageously large initial request.
Simulation studies: giving an imaginative situation and seeing what people said they would do.
Piloting phase: when you try stuff out to see if it works in an experiment
Forced compliances: given some incentive to engage in behavior that you wouldnÂ’t normally engage.
Decision making: choosing between things, importance of decisions, relative attractiveness, overlap
Jack Brehm: This experimenter got people to rate products and then give a choice for the students to pick which one they wanted (the products were chosen closely rated), then they asked the participants to rerate the products, they found that students actually rated their choice higher, the more cognitive dissonance you feel the more it pressures you to adapt
Janis and Mann theory of Role playing: name the experimenter that created the cognitive dissonance theory where participants were asked to role play and the second half were asked to read the experiment (all participants where female smokers), the ones that role played had to role play a scene where they were each a cancer patient and had to have immediate surgery that would be likely to be unsuccessful, the participants had to deliver a soliloquy, the other group did not have to do any of this, they are just exposed to all the information, so only difference is that one group acted it out and the other was just passive, what was found is that the people that acted out the performance they showed a greater fear about smoking and thus it was found that they smoked less so a long term effect occurred
Demand characteristics: sometimes in the context of an experiment subjects start to give the desired results
AronsonÂ’s twist on the cognitive dissonance known as hypocrisy manipulation & public commitment: Experimenter and name of theory that says there are things in life that we know we should do, if we can do two things:
1. Make participants mindful of what is socially positive and that they did not always follow it
2. Let them know that others will know

we can get the participants to do certain things in a social positive behavior.

**What can enhance their mindfulness?
cognitive elements: conceptual bits about knowledge described in cognitive dissonance theory

Start Studying!

Deck Info

Number of cards 94